Why Google Hangouts is the best group messaging app available today

Google Hangouts' presence and read confirmations make it the best group messaging app available today.

Heading to Las Vegas earlier this month for CES 2014, the Mobile Nations team had a bit of war in deciding what group messaging platform to use for the week. With 22 people on the ground from the Mobile Nations team (and 10 more from GeekBeat), that's a lot of people — with very varying opinions — to please.

No surprise, as the unofficial leader of the BlackBerry users left in the world, I wanted us all on BBM. Phil, Alex, Richard and Andrew from Android Central here of course all wanted us using Google Hangouts. GeekBeat suggested GroupMe, which the Windows Phone guys were OK with, as they had an app for that. A lot of the members of the team have WhatsApp installed, and it is available on all platforms, but nobody really seemed to be pushing for it. And I *think* most of us had Facebook/Facebook Messenger running, but nobody on the team would admit to using it, never mind suggesting it as our solution for the week.

We all agreed we needed to be on the same app and in a single chatroom, that wasn't up for debate. And I wanted to make sure we had the BEST group messaging solution possible at our fingertips, not simply the one that was available on every platform. If that meant some people had to carry around two phones for the week because the app we picked wasn't available on their platform, then so be it.

Ultimately, the decision we made was go to with Google Hangouts. The reason? Because of the group presence and read notification. If you don't know what I'm talking about, allow me to explain.

Look at the picture of the iPhone running Google Hangouts in the photo above. At the bottom of the chat, you can see a row of profile pics. Those are all the people in the group who have read to the last message you just posted to the group. And if you look up a couple lines, you'll see Rene Ritchie's pic floating there by itself. That means he read up until that point in the message, but didn't yet get to the two latest messages.

Ultimately, the decision we made was go to with Google Hangouts. The reason? Because of the group presence and read notification.

This all may be old hat if you're already an avid Hangouts fan, but I can't overstate just how useful this functionality is, especially when you're trying to coordinate and make plans with a big group of people in real time. After I'd post a message, I'd only have to wait a few seconds for the first few profile pics to show up of people who were quick to read it. Sometimes I had to wait a while before all the people would get the message. But at any given moment, I always knew exactly who had read the latest messages or not. And for those who didn't, I could scroll up and see where they left off.

Furthermore, beyond just seeing what point people had read up to, I could also see who was actually present with phone in hand with the app open at that moment. The read notification profile pics appear brighter (full color) when that person is actually on the other end with app open too. If the person just read the message and shoved the phone in their pocket, then it goes to the faded color. Again, it's super useful context to have when coordinating with people.

None of the other mobile messaging platforms I messaged at the beginning of the article had that functionality other than Google Hangouts. On all of BBM, WhatsApp and GroupMe, when you send messages to the group they're just sent (interestingly, Instagram has added similar read notifications with their recently-rolled out direct messaging feature). You just assume that people are hopefully reading them. The only real way to know somebody did is if they reply back. And probably for most people, that's fine. But in a situation like CES, where you're hustling and the pressure is on, well, the more info you have to work with the better.

When you send messages to the group they're just sent. You just assume that people are hopefully reading them. The only real way to know somebody did is if they reply back

Now, Hangouts is only on Android and iOS right now, so it meant we had to make sure that everybody on the team who was using a BB or Windows Phone also had another iOS or Android phone with them. A bit of pain in the ass, but looking back at that week I'm absolutely glad we went with Hangouts this time around. It saved us time. And it saved us from uncertainty.

This isn't to say that Hangouts is yet the perfect group messaging app. There are lot of group related features lacking from Hangouts. There's no administrative role, which sucks, as it means you can't kick people out of a room. You literally have to abandon the room, then go start a new one. It's too easy to try and video call everybody (which may have happened more than one late at night during the week in Vegas - drinking possibly involved). Photos are all in stream and there's no gallery view to cleanly see all that were shared. There is definitely room for improvement to make it an even better multi-platform group messaging application (bringing it to Windows Phone and BlackBerry would we welcome too).

When it comes to read notification though, they definitely have figured out a great implementation, and it's extremely valuable to have. This alone makes it the best group messaging app for mobile available today.

If you used hangouts you should be able to go Google plus and find a folder with all the media you shared in that conversation. Labeled something like "shared with (persons name)". Might not apply to a huge group conversation but it's there for me in smaller group messages.

Once again not sure if this applies to smaller groups but while you can not kick you can add people to a conversation. I have been able to remove someone from the mobile app once though. But I think that only works for the initiator of the group convo. Also the kicking if someone could have just been them leaving when I wanted to kick them lol

Also BBM should at least show a D for delivered and a check mark for read. But it has been years since I was on BBM.

BBM DEFINITELY shows Delivered / Read confirmations for 1 to 1 conversations, but on groups they do not. Neither do the others mentioned at the beginning of the article (GroupMe, WhatsApp). It's really that group read confirmation that makes it a winner *right now*.

That said, if BBM, etc. add in this type of group presence, then I might need to write an update to this article :)

I think that's the whole point of Android. If you don't like the particular implementation of a feature, in your case messaging, you can go and get whatever suits your needs/taste. Otherwise, there will never be progress, since there will always be someone that will complain that the previous version/way was better.

Agree, the only way I like the move is if they integrate everything like I message, where you can text people from a wifi only tablet using their Gmail or phone number. If that doesn't happen then it will be pretty annoying moving forward.

I cannot remember the exact name of the app, but given that the nexus 5 doesn't include a basic SMS app, there is a substitute in the play store that is essentially a duplicate of the AOSP app.
I do hate to say this, but essentially what Google is doing in their version of Android is changing. Starting with jelly bean, they have been replacing stock apps with Google apps.
At least you can get duplicates.

I had to prevent Hangouts from handling text messages at all, because of some early bugs. I've never bothered to turn it back on.

I've noticed when I send a hangouts message to a friend 3 states away, I have to follow it up with a text message just to get his attention.

Message delivery is really slow at times.
Presence Notification is flaky at best, you end up messaging in the blind hoping they are on line.
It doesn't know how to handle OTR (encrypted messages) like any common Jabber client.
Cant handle RichText like every common Jabber Client.
Have to join Plus to send a picture.
They totally broke Jabber interoperability.

Agree with what your saying I always wondered if the person I was texting was actually getting the message so I would call them and they would tell me "I didn't get any MSG" so I changed back to the stock SG S4 app which works wonderfully.

Don't disagree - multiplatform support is huge. That said, the way we put hangouts to use in this case... for coordinating 22 people in real time (not just hanging out... what a poor name for the way we put it to use), the value of the confirmation trumped the lack of support.

I own a 1020 and a nexus 5 but, because of the camera on the Lumia, I haven't used my nexus in more than a month and hangouts is probably what I miss the most. Sure, it's not perfect, but its the messaging app available imo. Wish Microsoft would work Skype up to the level of hangouts because I know there won't be any google apps released on WP any time soon.

Except it's not.
There's one key reason why. It's not fully cross platform. It's why everyone still uses SMS because it's available to everyone. And why Whatsapp still number one in users. And a few other almost 100% cross platform messaging apps are used more often by the average consumer crowd. Skype, BBM, FB messenger.

The one group chat I keep going on a regular basis is one with all my brothers. 1 has a government issued blackberry. We used Whatsapp and now BBM. Everybody else is on IOS or android. It just takes that one person who cant be included and the whole group falls apart.

In this particular case if hangouts was on one blackberry it would bring 4 more users to hangouts from IOS and android.

I understand your points regarding the value of Hangouts in your situation, but I doubt the general public could easily lay their hands on a spare Android or iOS device if they weren't already using one.

And if they do have a spare device, it likely isn't from a different platform. Most people who have spares just keep last year's model of what ever platform they like. i.e., the Nexus 5 guy might have a Nexus 4 as a spare. iPhone 5S user probably has an iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S in their drawer.

eh... yes and no. The only people I know who have Blackberries were all issued their BB device for work. They also all have their own personal device, either Android or iOS. Work issued BBs are definitely a thing and while the same can't be said of WP, I would bet that people who have BBs have a disproportionate rate of having secondary devices from another platform as compared to Android or iOS users.

As far as photos go while in hangouts. On Android, the photos are synced with Google+ and I can view them in the Photos app that is part of Google+ now, as well as on the web. I am not sure how that integration works on iOS though.

Now we need to get those dumb people off every other third party crappy app that competes with this. I can't get people to switch because they already use {enter terrible app here}. Hangouts is the best one going, its free, and integrates with your gmail account - what else do you need?!

Hangouts is awesome but it really needs a lot of kinks worked out of it on iOS. Compared to the Android version it has a lot of issues like the chat history taking a long time to load and the message thread not being updated as soon as new messages come in.

2. If you couldn't receive half your messages and it was taking nearly 10 seconds or more to send short ones, it's either one of the following: Your network (WiFi/cellular), your phone or you. I'm almost certain it's a combination of all three, but I'm leaning more towards "user error/incompetence".

3. The article was written by CrackBerry Kevin. It's just posted on Android Central, however, as someone else already pointed out this was up elsewhere as early as last week.

4. I just sent a few Hangouts messages. One as solely a Hangout message on my computer. Sent, with a reply received, in a second. I also sent an SMS message through Hangouts on my phone, went through in a second. Sent an MMS message on my phone too, took about 5 seconds (relating to network connectivity issues, I work in a government building and the fact that I get signal in here at all is truly boggles the mind).

5. In summation, please do not speak before thinking. You look silly and/or like an idiot. Especially when it's easy to prove you wrong on every single one of your talking points.

Odd. Haven't had that happen to me yet. Guess I'm just lucky. Only time I've had issues sending is when I've been out in the boonies with no signal. Also on T-Mobile and we have LTE all over the place (for the most part) locally. There's just a handful of random roads where Edge is all that's available and that's usually when I've noticed the issue sending.

I use Hangouts every single day for multiple group conversations. It absolutely rocks for the reasons stated in the article. It's not perfect, of course, but no solution is.

Some people (after reading the comments) need to realize that the use case Kevin described is not a normal use case, where having multiple devices just to use a service will be more important than anything else. Different people will have different priorities for picking a service based on their particular use case.

I have too many group chats to NOT use hangouts now, it's ubiquitous among the people I communicate with, and as others have said, I've converted a few of my friends over to it to communicate with me (I like the chat heads a lot, but otherwise don't like Facebook Messenger).

When (not if, I have full confidence that this will happen) Google Voice and Hangouts get properly integrated (as well as SMS/MMS. Current solution still feels hacked) it will be a go to app for a TON of people. That might even be enough to make me use Google Voice full time.

For photos, create an event in G+ (which can be private). Anyone "attending" the event can take photos and have them shared to the event. That will create a gallery of images from the attendees.

It doesn't really link to Hangouts, but it is a good way to keep images from one event in one place. Combine that with Hangouts and you have one system for communication and keeping track of everything.

It's too bad Hangouts completely sucks in place of the stock messenger. It takes too long to load. Pictures take forever to download (often unable to complete). Maybe it's good as a group messanger but not as an everyday, one-on-one messenger imo.

It used to be the best. Now when i'm on mobile data I do not receive others' comments for a good 16-25 minutes after they're posted. It makes it almost unusable unless i'm on wi-fi. And I know the problem exists on both T-Mobile and AT&T data.

They've made great updates to this app - it is the go-to messaging app for me and my friends, regardless of phone platform.

They just need to fix that separate SMS/Hangouts message thing and truly integrate them, squash the open-your-thread-in-the-middle-of-it-so-you-have-to-scroll-to-the-bottom issue and make it so it doesn't mute my music I'm listening to just because I'm in the Hangouts app while the phone is on Silent or Vibrate.

God Kevin, how stalkerish are you? Your WhatsApp rant at CB revolved entirely around not being able to get read reports, or delivery reports. And now you want to know when someone has the app opened? One of the first things I do on WhatsApp is turn that stupid feature off. And you can't do that on Hangouts, which is a big minus for me.

I never use Hangouts, only because none of the people I talk to do, though I do like the app a lot. WhatsApp is starting to become popular among my friends, but since most of them use iPhones and iMessage, so far SMS has been the only reliable option. Even most of my friends who have Android phones never use it and half still don't even know about Google+ or Hangouts.

Thanks Kevin,
I've used Hangouts for a while communicating with a small group of Ingress Agents. I had only figured out the part that the brightening of the profiles meant they were actively reading. The location of the profile didn't make sense to me until you explained it.

Personally the biggest caveat is not being able to kick people. We have had to abandon hangouts when an opponent gets themselves invited. We also would like to see "handles" added to the profile. When you use agent names to address people you tend to not pick up their real name then wonder who this new person is in the hangout. Some groups have tried GroupMe or IRC but everyone has a hangout account and it seems to be the go to app for quick group chats.

You're so right. The learning curve on Google Hangouts is REALLY HIGH. It's one of the areas where I think it can be improved the most compared to the competition. It's kind of like an IQ test learning to use it.

Once you figure it makes sense. But honestly, the first times I used it I had no idea how the group read confirmations actually worked. Then once it clicked, I was like... woah, brilliant. Every group IM app needs that.

Also agree with you on needing to be able to have a room admin, and the ability to kick people out.

Far from perfect still, but they definitely made it a useful too with their group read functions.

I hate Hangouts for groupchat. If there are 5+ chatty people in the group (and the group that im in has 50+) then you will never ever find a place where you left off. thats why we used whatsapp but it had user limits and no desktop client and then we heared of Telegram app. Its amazing. Its like whatsapp on steroids. Its new and evolving. It has all the things that hangouts lack + secure chat. I will probably only use hangouts to comunicate with cave people that still use it.

I like hangouts. Only fault is that it will not receive MMS messages on my phone. It says click to download then sits for eternity and never downloads. I know others are having this problem from reading comments on the play store.

Does anyone else have trouble in hangouts with video calls? Many times, when I try to accept a call, it doesn't connect, and when I am calling someone else, it doesn't ring on their phone until it already timed out.. Video Quality never seems to be that great compared to Facetime.

If you use quickpic app it will pull your hangout images into a unique gallery. I've only launched it from within handouts but it works great as long as each image is sent individually and not as group

Actually, Facebook messenger has all of the features that Kevin detailed. I use both regularly (different friend groups) and I find them to be at parity in terms of text , but I prefer hangouts for the quick and seamless video chatting from the same client. But that shouldn't take anything away from fb.

It becomes more of a "which social network does everyone have" issue instead of a features issue. Which is why Facebook may be the better choice sometimes...

This is why I have nothing but respect for Kevin and the Crackberry team. Despite Hangouts being a product developed by a rival company to Blackberry, he could state that it was, at the moment, a better messaging platform as far as group "read" notifications.

Good article, Kevin. Now I have to go over to Crackberry and give some love.

For sure one of the best solutions right now, however I usually try to avoid Google services, even thou my company has all it's communication on Google's services. A lot of the missing features mentioned by Kevin, are available on Whatsapp (photo gallery, cross platform). The only exception would be the managing feature, that is something that would only be available on the grandfather of all messaging apps, BBM.

So far there is no perfect solution for all of us, but competition is always good.

I've had hangouts disabled on my HTC One ever since I got it but after reading up on it, I decided to enable it and give it test. I'm not quite sure if I like it or not. It doesn't seem to do anything real special and nobody I know really uses it. Does anybody here use it primarily? I'm really in to hello sms right now..

The reason the author is praising it, is for the messaging with the Hangouts protocol, not it's SMS integration. You can continue using Hello SMS for your SMS/MMS messages and Hangouts for Hangouts messages.

In WhatsApp I can set the notification on a "one to one" and "group chat" level. I will still get the messeges if I don't have any notification.

In Hangout I want to be able to set vibration and sound notification on a chat level but as it is now if I uncheck the notification messege under the specific chat /alternativs then I won't get a notification for when people write to in that chat.

I still want to get the messeges but I want to be able to mute/put on vibrat only a specific chat. Otherwise I'll be spammed with notification alerts for group chats.

My biggest issue with hangouts is that is doesn't "just know" which of my contacts are on hangouts and which aren't.

Google knows who is a hangouts user, or they could know, so when I compose a message it shouldn't bother me with a choice about whether to use SMS or Hangouts. If the person I'm sending it to is on Hangouts it should use that if not use SMS. If imessage can do that I'm sure Hangouts can.

I really like Hangouts, but then heard that I needed to use the stock messaging app on my Moto X in order to take full advantage of Motorola Assist (which I love). Does anyone know if this is the case?

Hangout only shows 4 line of your text as your typing it. So frustrating. Isn't there an app out there that will show my entire text? My Evo text box/field expanded as you type, like the iphone. I thought all phones did this until the Moto x. Help need app that will show my entire text as I type!!!!

Oh Wait ... You didnt want to sent a group text to a group in your google contacts group list .... Nope can't find how to access any of those groups - if it's there it is not intuitive and not easily found how to do it in a web search - not in Hangouts and not from the stock text messenger. Had to finally find and install the Handcent app to actually get back to work. Could Hangouts Suck any more than it does??? After 3 days of F-ing with it I disabled it.

Although Google Hangouts is nice, it is sorely lacking in many other features and takes a long time for Google devs to implement new functions. The last thing I want would be to splinter my messenging apps into "the best one for group chatting ala Hangouts", "best one for voice recordings ala WeChat walkie-talkie", "best one for secret chats ala Telegram", "best one for Broadcast List ala Whatsapp", "best one for calling mobile phones ala Skype", "best one for web and phone SMS ala SMSdroid" and so on. You get the idea... which is exactly what it is in the IM world right now. No one app seems to have implemented ALL the features of ALL the IMs. (that is, "Read" notification in group chats + walkie-talkie + secret chats + Broadcast List + Calling phones + SMS using web SMS + Video Calls + "Look around and make new friends") A technical impossibility?

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